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Curriculum

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Curriculum

Our CurriculumEach and every child within the Learning Academy Partnership will experience a culture of excellence so that they achieve their very best and acquire skills, which carry into their next step in education - and beyond. We believe that their curriculum must matter today and not just tomorrow.

‘If you are going to do something, I believe, you should do it well. You should sweat over it and make sure it is strong and accurate and beautiful and you should be proud of it’ Ron Berger - An Ethic Excellence

At the Learning Academy Partnership we recognise the uniqueness of each and every academy. However, threaded across each of our academies is: the pursuit of excellence. Underpinning the LAP curriculum is the principle of Beautiful Work, which ensures that our children become craftsmen and high quality and excellent learning is an outcome of the curriculum.

Our Curriculum PrinciplesWe approach the curriculum as project based learning which is based upon three, non-negotiable, elements: a purposeful outcome; an authentic audience and underpinned by a grounding text.

Each project will be planned around key elements, which must be embedded in every project:

Purposeful and Meaningful Outcome

Created and presented to an Authentic Audience

Embeds opportunities to provide feedback to pupils

Critiquing is a tool embedded in every project

An expert is part of the critique of every project

Values of the academy are embedded

A grounding text underpins the project

The Literacy Teaching Sequence is the skeleton through the project

It is based on no longer than a half term period

Multiple re-drafting based on critique is a non-negotiable

Beautiful, well-crafted work is created

Once a term each child will present their two project based learning outcomes to the community

Some subjects will be taught discretely and others will be linked through the project-based learning. We believe in enhancing the children’s learning by ensuring that real experiences and experts are woven into each project. Children must have the opportunity to experience things beyond their day to day experiences.

Learning Academy Partnership CurriculumAll children must be provided with the opportunity to achieve their very best and the curriculum we provide is bespoke to each academy. However, we want to foster and facilitate collaboration between academies in order to provide an excellent curriculum. Therefore we have developed broad areas, which academies can use as a vehicle to collaborate and still reflect the unique needs of each academy.

Our umbrella themes are:

Respect - Our Family

Wow!

Our Planet

Journeys and Quests

Our Worldwide Family

These themes will reflect the current needs, uniqueness and values of each academy and be delivered in a project based learning approach. The principle of our curriculum design will be threaded throughout. We follow the National Curriculum.

Christian EthosWithin our Church Schools, we are proud of the Christian distinctiveness and it is embedded in our entire curriculum. Our Christian Distinctiveness is driven through collective worship and high quality RE. The impact of this can be seen within the Christian character embedded across our church schools. Within the project based learning approach RE may be taught discretely or as part of a project.

British ValuesThe promotion of fundamental British Values is at the heart of building pupils resilience to radicalisation and building an understanding of how to be a citizen in the community that they are part of. We provide a safe learning environment for pupils in which they can discuss ideas and issues in order develop a firm basis of knowledge so that they are able to understand the risks associated with terrorism and therefore be able to challenge extremist views and arguments. We promote discernment and enable pupils to have a secure knowledge in order to be able to flourish in a pluralistic society.

All staff are required to uphold and promote the fundamental principles of British values. These values include:

Democracy

The rule of law

Individual Liberty and

Mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith.

Empowering Excellence - Wider Family EngagementCollectively Empowering Excellence are the key values which underpin everything we do at the Learning Academy Partnership. This is applicable to all stakeholders. We believe that to empower excellence in children, we need to work as a collective to ensure this - parents and community members are key.

Alongside family learning we need ensure that they are able to engage with the curriculum and any level. Each term, parents, stakeholders and community members will be invited in to celebrate the children’s Beautiful Work. We will also engage local and wider community members as ‘experts’ to support the project based learning. This will provide the children with a meaningful audience but also to celebrate with the wider school family the excellence that has been achieved.